Study says National Minimum Standards don’t measure up

University of Kent researchers say national minimum standards for residential homes don’t measure up The Department of Health’s national minimum standards for care homes don’t measure important outcomes for people using services and should be revised, say researchers at the University of Kent’s Tizard Centre. Studying homes for people with learning disabilities, the researchers looked at whether residents were being enabled to take part in activity, whether they had choice over everyday matters and how well the home was organised to support them. Only two out of 108 correlations between care standards and research measures were found to be significant. Responding to the study, the Commission for Social Care Inspection’s chief inspector Davud Behan said that, over the past year, CSCI had been radically redesigning the way it regulated social care services to focus on the experiences of people who use services. “The first phase to the reform has seen us produce more accessible reports which are easier to read a